1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to a passenger entertainment system and, more particularly, to a system and method for identifying program selections in a passenger entertainment system that provides video-on-demand, audio-on-demand, near video-on-demand, and digital audio and video broadcasts.
2. Description of the Related Art
FIG. 1 illustrates selected components of a conventional passenger entertainment system, e.g., an in-flight entertainment (IFE) system, that employs a radio frequency (RF) cable 10 to deliver programming signals to the passenger seats 20. To deliver multiple programming signals to the passengers and thereby provide the passengers with programming choices, a video modulator 30 is used. In a typical arrangement, the video modulator 30 is connected to multiple video cassette players 31, 32, 33 that generate a plurality of different NTSC video streams and to a plurality of other inputs (not shown). The video modulator 30 receives the NTSC video stream inputs and the other inputs and modulates each input into a frequency band corresponding to one of multiple RF channels.
The passenger seats 20 are each equipped with a seat controller card (SCC) 40 that is tunable to the frequency bands corresponding to the multiple RF channels. The tuning of the SCC is carried out based on inputs from a passenger control unit (PCU) 50 that is provided for each passenger seat and operated by the passenger seated therein. For example, in a passenger entertainment system having 24 RF channels, the PCU 50 may be operated to tune the SCC to one of twenty-four (24) different RF channels. Once the SCC is tuned to receive from the RF channel selected by the passenger, it demodulates the RF signal passed therethrough and sends it to a seat display unit (SDU) 60 for viewing.
When the passenger wants to find out what programming selections are available to him or her, the passenger may either channel surf, i.e., toggle between the channels or change the channels up or down sequentially until he or she finds a program of interest, or refer to a hardcopy of an entertainment guide provided by the airline and directly switch to the channel corresponding to the program of interest using a numeric keypad provided on the PCU 50. In either case, the selected channel number is the same as the RF channel number carrying the program signal (i.e., there is an equally-distributive relationship between RF channels and the programming channels, such as a one-to-one correspondence between the RF channels and programming channels) and that RF channel number is displayed to the passenger on the PCU 50 and/or the SDU 60 to identify or indicate to the passenger the channel number that he or she has selected. In certain cases, the channel identification in the above manner is possible, because only one programming signal or stream is carried on a single RF channel. In other cases, the channel identification is possible because the programming channels are equally distributed across each of the RF channels, such as in a one-to-four, one-to-six, or one-to-fifteen correspondence between the RF channels and the programming channels.
However, when multiple programming signals are carried on a single RF channel and the programming channels are not equally distributed among the RF channels, the intuitive relationship between the RF channels and the programming channels breaks down and the conventional way(s) of identifying the program channels is no longer adequate.